Greetings everyone:
I’m a long time observer of the forum but this is my first post. I’ve been working on a new mobile gaming technology for quite some time. If you develop games for mobile platforms, please read on.
What it is:
Aimfire Gaming SDK for Unity enables seamless local multiplayer mobile games. It contains the following parts:
- A synchronization library that sync the clocks between mobile devices to < 1ms.
- A peer-to-peer library that removes the typical requirement of devices be connected to the same WiFi network (in fact, no internet connection is required at all)
- A zero-effective-latency layer that makes cross-screen games not only possible, but easy to implement.
Seeing is believing - below are some demos that showcase its capabilities wrt multi-screen games:
The problem:
The key problem solved by the SDK is that of latency. Latency is bad, as probably anyone who has worked on a multi-player networked game can agree - the difference of a few hundred milliseconds can make or break a networked game. Cross-screen games, defined as games with playing surface spanning multiple devices, are even more sensitive to latency. As all screens are visible to all users at the same time, the slightest latency and jitter in the communications link can shatter the seamless experience that a developer might hope to achieve. Latency-hiding strategies designed for networked multi-player games simply do not apply to cross-screen games. The picture below illustrates what a game would look like if it attempts to combat latency using traditional methods. This is precisely the reason why no such game exists today.
The solution:
The goal of the Aimfire SDK is to help game developers design seamless cross-screen experiences, in which any latency in the physical layer is well hidden from the end-user, so that ZERO latency is perceived. This SDK packs in more mobile technology than meets the eye. With it, cross-screen games not only become possible, but also fairly straightforward for you to implement.
The SDK handles synchronization and the underlying communication layer between the mobile devices - there is no explicit lock-steps for you to design or states to synchronize, and there is no server that you need to set up. You are still designing ONE game - the SDK takes care of screen splitting for you.
The possibilities:
The SDK gives you much more than just an extended display. The mobile devices can form nonplanar relationships, and suddenly you have a whole new spatial dimension to play with! This is, again, super easy for you to set up, with the APIs provided.
You can quickly and easily adapt your existing games to cross-screen, and in the process add lots more fun and social elements to them: just imagine an “Angry Birds” type game in which birds and pigs flying across multiple phones, or a “Clash Royale” type game where your troops marching seamlessly into your friend’s device.
More opportunities will come from games that are designed specifically to take advantage of this new capability. Some fun examples include party games (such as pouring wine, or dumping coins from your device to your friend’s), board games, TCG/CCG games, or strategy games. Another area of recent interest is Virtual Reality games - our SDK can help you turn solitary VR activities into social experiences, by allowing end-users to see, hear, and react at exactly the same time.
Limitations:
If you reached here, you are probably wondering “this sounds too good to be true!”. So here’s the catch
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Aimfire’s technology is cross-platform, however the current release of the SDK will include support for Android devices only. iOS device support will come in a future release.
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While multiple devices (>2) will be supported in the future, the current release officially supports only two devices. With a bit of work, you can do the extension yourself. Or you can wait for our next release.
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Aimfire’s technology hides latency, but it does’t completely eliminate latency (no one can - we all have to obey the laws of physics, remember?). The side effect of latency-hiding is that there will be a narrow zone along the boundary between the devices where free movement is restricted. When games are designed with this characteristic in mind, the restriction is completely imperceptible to the end user.
The ask:
We intend to release the library to the Asset Store soon, and I would love to hear your feedback and feature requests! I plan to post much more information (feature lists, tutorial videos and documentation) here as we move towards release. Your input is super important for me as it helps us shape the product to best suit your needs.
[Update 7/30/2016]
The Aimfire SDK is now LIVE on Asset Store! Please go ahead and try it out - it’s FREE.
After you import the Unity package, please go to “File → Build Settings”, and manually add all the scenes in the AimfireSDK/_Scenes folder, as shown in the picture below. This is due to a glitch when uploading the SDK to Asset Store, and we will fix it in the next update.
